Vincent de Paul spent his life — once the chaplain of galley-slaves, later confessor to nobility — building the great structures of organised Catholic charity that have shaped the modern Church: the Congregation of the Mission (Vincentians, 1625), the Daughters of Charity with St. Louise de Marillac (1633), foundling hospitals, asylums for the abandoned, missions in Madagascar and North Africa. He died in Paris in 1660 at eighty.
His tomb was opened in 1712 to begin the canonisation process. The body was found intact — even the eyes were intact. A second exhumation in 1737 confirmed it. Centuries later the bones have skeletonised but the relic remains; the face is masked in silver wax. His body is venerated in a great silver shrine high above the high altar of the Lazarist chapel in Paris; his heart is preserved in a separate reliquary at the Chapel of the Miraculous Medal nearby. Canonised 1737.